


Respite

by tastewithouttalent



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Comfort, Helicopters, Inline with canon, M/M, No Plot/Plotless, Pre-Slash, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-12
Updated: 2018-04-12
Packaged: 2019-04-07 11:12:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14079627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tastewithouttalent/pseuds/tastewithouttalent
Summary: "Hermann’s heart is racing, his breath is catching in his chest, he feels like he’s glowing with energy; he’s never been so valuable, never had such vital information to share with those around him." Hermann and Newt have a moment of understanding on their way back to the Shatterdome.





	Respite

Hermann has never been this important in all his life. There is beauty in mathematics, a poetry to the numbers in his head that drag off the crush of chalk at his fingertips and across his blackboards; he feels sometimes as if he holds the shape of the universe at his fingertips, if he could just reach out and lay hands to it. But words come hard when the numbers come easy, even his best attempts at conveying the absolute _surety_ in his veins fall to flat pedantry in others’ ears, and for all that he feels the weight of his insight he knows too well he has never been more than a curiosity to the men of action that surround him. But now: everything is happening faster than he can breathe, from the stumbling rush of action to the military escort he and Newton merit and the rush of words, demands spilling from his lips and Newton’s at the same time until they’re speaking in a single synchronous voice to insist on their return to the base, to all but commandeer the helicopter into action to sweep them back to headquarters. Hermann’s heart is racing, his breath is catching in his chest, he feels like he’s glowing with energy; he’s never been so valuable, never had such vital information to share with those around him.

He’s also never, ever been so sick.

“Again?” Newton asks, the question clearly rhetorical even to Hermann’s dazed thoughts as the other tips in over the open plastic bag in his hands to retch helplessly again. They aren’t any of the tidy paper bags that come on airplanes in the military helicopter; they barely merit seatbelts for the hard plastic seats they’re perched on. Hermann has no idea from where Newton produced the plastic bag; he does know that it smells like Chinese food, fried breading and sweet-and-sour sauce and chow mein that drags up too-vivid images from his Drift-harrowed mind. His stomach twists again, his throat works on a useless attempt at heaving up something more than the bile he’s been spitting for the last several minutes. “Jeez, dude, saving the world too much excitement for you?”

“It’s the flying,” Hermann manages. His throat is raw, he feels like the words come out bloodstained, but other than the physical grate there’s no edge to his explanation. “And the adrenaline.” He gasps a breath and blinks hard to clear his vision. There’s wet on his glasses, rain or involuntary tears he doesn’t know which; it’s impossible to clear his sight, even if there were anything worth seeing in the dark of the helicopter around them. “And the Drift.” He presses his lips together and struggles through a swallow as his stomach attempts something like turning itself inside-out. “You did that _twice_?”

“Yep,” Newton says. His far leg is bouncing with nervous energy; the movement pulls Hermann’s bleary gaze in spite of himself. “I mean it was a lot shorter the first time. From what I remember, anyway. The information was much clearer this time, I don’t know if it’s because the brain was so much more intact or just because I had someone else with me. I wonder what would happen if we tried it a third time?”

“I intend to never find out,” Hermann says. He lifts his head from the frantic shift of Newton’s knee to look up into the other’s face, or at least what of it he can see. “I don’t understand how you’re not getting sick.”

“Nothing to throw up,” Newton says at once, and punctuates with a too-fast laugh that splits his face in two. His teeth flash white in the dark around them. “I’m not sure when I last ate.”

“Yesterday lunch,” Hermann says without thinking, his mind volunteering this comfortingly normal piece of information from amidst the hellscape of kaiju-memory experiences. “Just before you tried Drifting the first time.”

“Oh,” Newton says. “Yeah. I guess so. That sounds right, anyway.” His head turns, his gaze fixes on Hermann alongside him. His knee is still bouncing but the mania of his smile has tempered itself somewhat; his eyes are very dark even behind the cracked lens of his glasses. “I should have had you there before I tried that, probably.”

“I wouldn’t have let you try any such thing,” Hermann says with perfect certainty. “I wasn’t going to let you kill yourself right in front of my eyes.” Another memory throws itself up in his mind, this one his own, dragged to painful clarity by the Drift: Newton on the lab floor, face slack and body convulsing, blood on his face and dripping onto his shirt. Hermann had thought he was dying, had thought he was dead, had thought--his hands tighten on the bag in his hands, his throat works on something other than nausea. He’s voiceless, speechless, language stolen from him as if the chalk of his thoughts has snapped in two; and into the quiet it’s Newton who speaks.

“I almost did anyway.” His voice is soft; it’s strange how clearly Hermann can hear it over the sound of the helicopter blades whirring above. “I should have thought. I didn’t think at all.” He breaks into a laugh but it doesn’t touch the dark in his eyes. “I really scared you, huh?”

Hermann stares at Newton for a moment. The helicopter is shaking all around them, rattling its way through the storm on their way back to save the world; they have knowledge too much to bear in their head, a critical message they have to bring back to the base. And Newton Geizler is looking at him with softness in his gaze, with Hermann’s Drift-borrowed feelings on his lips, and for a moment of sudden clarity Hermann can feel the danger of that loss so narrowly averted, can feel the bone-deep terror of Newton shaking in his arms on a bloodstained laboratory floor as he didn’t have time to feel it in the moment, as he didn’t have the space to process it. It’s like staring directly into a chasm, like gazing too long into the vast, uncountable infinities that lie between even the closest of numbers, and Hermann’s stomach roils violently and he has to duck forward over his knees again as his body rejects the impossibility of a world alone as surely as it rejected the blue-stained biology of the kaiju.

“Man,” Newton says, his voice soft even over the sound of the helicopter and the raw sounds of Hermann’s body trying to invert itself. “You really are having a bad time of it.” A hand touches at the back of Hermann’s head, fingers slide to stroke against the short-cut hair at the back of his neck; Hermann can feel the heat run down the whole length of his spine like the contact of Newton’s fingers is a neural handshake all its own. “Might as well get it over with now, it’ll be hard to save the world if you’re puking into a bag the whole time.”

Hermann presses his lips together and swallows against the sickly-sweet burn at the back of his throat. “Are you _petting_ me?”

“I’m holding your hair back,” Newton says with an edge of defensiveness on his tone. “It’s what you’re supposed to do when someone’s sick. Didn’t you go to _any_ parties in college?”

“No,” Hermann grates.

“I guess you wouldn’t,” Newton says. “I mean, _I_ did, but I never had anyone to hold my hair back either. It always sounded like it would be nice, though.” His hand catches against the top of Hermann’s head, his fingers push and ruffle the locks on their way to cradling the back of the other’s neck; there’s a raw, instinctive comfort to it, like it’s plugging into the same hindbrain impulse that asks for fire, and warmth, and safety. Hermann’s breath catches, his chest tightens; for a moment he’s sure he’s going to cry, that when he next opens his mouth he’s going to sob out helpless tears of something between present gratitude and retroactive pain, of years of fear and resignation demanding simple human comfort. He blinks hard, trying to fight back the impulse, trying to drag himself back to composure; and then Newton breathes out hard, and says “C’mere, Hermann” and Hermann is being pulled sideways by that hand on the back of his neck and those fingers sliding through his hair. His head comes in hard against Newton’s chest, his glasses slide to crush against the rain-damp tangle of his hair, and Newton’s arm catches around his shoulder to brace him still while his other hand slides up to stroke Hermann’s hair back and off his forehead.

It’s not a comfortable position. Hermann is dragging against the restraints of his seatbelt, his hands are still gripping the edges of that vile plastic bag; his throat is burning and his mouth tastes almost as awful as Newton’s shirt smells. But Newton’s arm around his shoulders is steady, and his fingers stroking through Hermann’s hair are gentle, and when Hermann gasps an exhale he can feel it take all the tight-wound strain in his body with it. His shoulders go slack, his body relaxes to Newton’s hold on him, and when he shuts his eyes he can feel the relief of the dark radiating through the whole of his body.

The sound of the helicopter drowns out the rhythm of his own pulse, but Hermann can still feel it thudding in perfect time with the pace of Newton’s heart beating hard against him.


End file.
